What is Git?

Git is a distributed SCM/VCS, which means every developer has a full copy of all history of every revision of the code, making queries against the history very fast and versatile. The EGit project is implementing Eclipse tooling on top of a Java implementation of Git.

What is JGit?

JGit is a EDL/BSD licensed, lightweight, pure Java library implementing the Git version control file access routines, network protocols, and core version control algorithms.

What is EGit?

EGit is an EPL licensed Eclipse Team provider for Git, built on top of JGit.

What is New and Noteworthy?

Where can I find older releases of EGit?

It's recommended to use the latest released version of EGit, which is in this p2 repository (update site): http://download.eclipse.org/egit/updates
In case you need an older version, try an older repository, the following table lists the stable URL of all released EGit p2 repositories.

Note: open the p2 repository URL from the Eclipse installation wizard (Help > Install New Software) and add it as a new "Software Site". You may use the
p2 browser to inspect the content of a p2 repository.

Retention Policy

All release p2 repositories will be kept forever.

What versions of Eclipse does EGit target?

In general EGit promises to support at least the latest two Eclipse releases.

If possible we will not prevent usage in older releases but if we want to take advantage of new functionality only available in one of the latest two Eclipse releases but not in older releases we will update dependencies which will in fact discontinue support for older releases.

Compatible version of Git: Compatibility is on a feature by feature basis. Currently the major version
related difference is in how Git handles file names with non-ASCII file names. Git for Windows 1.7.10 and later encodes filenames in UTF-8 which is compatible with JGit. Git on Mac, v1.7.12 can encode filenames in a way that is compatible with EGit and Git for Windows if core.precomposeunicode is set to true. However EGit on OS X does not handle Unicode well.

What are the main differences between original Git and JGit(EGit)?

What is the mapping Git commands to EGit operations?

How compatible is EGit with Git?

Some, but not all configuration options/features in Git are available in EGit/JGit. Here is a summary, not yet complete describing some of these, including notable differences. Note that the set of EGit/JGit is not based off a particular Git version.

config

config

description

branch.autosetuprebase

supported

branch.autosetupmerge

supported

core.autocrlf

Since 2.0 supports true,false and input. See the tutorial for notes about making sure EGit picks up the configuration. Complementary core.safecrlf and gitattributes are not supported yet.

Supported in JGit, but no EGit usually amounts to having no or strange behavior would one
attempt to use it in the Eclipse IDE.

Notes:
For those that can read the source, look at ConfigConstants.java for a hint on what options
JGit recognizes. If it appears there, an option may be supported, but it may also mean for a few
cases that JGit just looks for it and then explicitly tells the user the option is not supported.
If it does not appear, it's most certainly up for grabs as a contribution. The file contains lots
of config options that only applies to JGit (DFS, gerrit).

Environment

JGit supports some environment variables. Do not set those for the Eclipse IDE. We'll list a few ones
that may be used, but most apply only to using JGit from the command line.

variable

description

GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES

supported

GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL

supported

GIT_AUTHOR_NAME

supported

GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES

supported. Also EGit may be benefited when used with automounted file systems

GIT_DIR

supported

GIT_INDEX_FILE

supported

GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY

supported

GIT_SSH

plink, tortoiseplink

SSH config

TBD: JGit does its own parsing of the ~/.ssh/config file.

Using PuTTY Agent on Windows for SSH Keys

It is possible to use PuTTY's key management capabilities on Windows for EGit as well. For that you work you must install PuTTY and TortioseGit. Then set GIT_SSH environment variable to c:\Programe Files\TortioseGit\bin\TortiosePlink.exe.

Store SSH Key Passphrase in Mac Keyring

It is possible to store the SSH Key Passphrase in Mac's Keyring. However. EGit's internal SSH client does not support this. Thus, in order benefit from Keyring EGit must be configured to use the Mac vanilla SSH agent. This is possible by setting the GIT_SSH environment variable to /usr/bin/ssh.